EDITORS' PICK

The Prime Minister of India had urged people to use public transportation rather than personal vehicles during the Global Mobility Seminar held in September 2018. This would require public transportation to be incentivised and private vehicle ownership/usage to be disincentivised. Public bus transportation in Bengaluru is ailing, with the Bengaluru Metropolitan Transportation Corporation (BMTC) seeking Rs 260 crores from the state government to sustain its existing level of services. Currently the BMTC is running on a loss of Rs 10 for every kilometer that it operates. There have been discussions by the Transport Department to propose a bus fare hike. This…

Take a quick look around you and it should not be too difficult to identify some of the most pressing issues in your immediate surroundings. Waste management, air pollution, water scarcity, plastic pollution: these and other issues pose a direct threat to the quality of life as we know it in the city today. But what is your solution to these problems? How would 'you' propose to address these civic issues? While some may flounder a bit when confronted with this question, the same cannot be said of the bright young minds participating in the Sarvalokaa Hackathon 2019, where they came…

Finally, it looks like the Chennai Metro is ready to roll out services across its full length of 45.1 km in Phase I, nine years after it was approved by the Centre. As one of the biggest urban infrastructure projects of Chennai, costing upwards of $2.5 billion, it upgrades the city’s profile globally, although it is nowhere near the emerging international paradigm of Mobility as a Service (MaaS). In fact, it is a pretty scattered set of options in Tamil Nadu’s capital, with a mix of regulated systems for low quality government-run buses, suburban trains operated by the Central government, the Metro…

In the last four years, promises to build hostels exclusively for north-eastern students across cities in the north and south have drawn mixed reactions. Some hail the move as an assurance of "safety," while critics slam it as "divisive". Meanwhile, amid divergent reactions, the first hostel built for female students from the north-eastern states, under the scheme mooted by the NDA government at the centre, is said to have been completed, and will be inaugurated in Bengaluru's Jnana Bharathi campus "soon." This was disclosed in a recent announcement by Dr Jitendra Singh, the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Development of North-Eastern Region (DoNER). The hostel,…

Tall fences meet the eyes before one steps into the Sarakki lake premises. Most of the lake is currently dry. One can see the tractors busy removing silt from the lake bed. Walking around the lake can be unpleasant, as there are no walking paths currently and the surface is uneven. Garbage is sprawled across a certain section of the lake, and remnants of burnt garbage is present. Green patches of wetlands in the lake area stand out in the otherwise dry lake. "Birds have already started to come back to the Sarakki lake," says Professor K S Bhat, with a…

A private car should ideally carry four to five people. But a recent survey in Udyog Vihar Industrial Area in Gurugram showed that it carries only 1.6 persons on average. The survey was conducted by the IT company Nagarro among over 2600 of its own employees. Among the survey respondents, 42 percent were using private cars to come to office, contributing to the infamous congestion in the city. The majority of them did not carpool. A quarter of the car users sometimes parked their cars on the street next to office, which could also congest the road. Another 19 percent…

Over the Republic Day weekend, around 5000 Chennaiites flocked to an exhibition that showcased an art form that dates back to the days of the Indus Valley civilisation and is perhaps one of the oldest upcycling methods that has been traditionally and indigenously practised: Quilting. The first edition of the India Quilt Festival took place from 25- 27 January, 2019. The event, a pioneer in the space, featured competitions, stalls, workshops and lectures on quilting. Citizen Matters spoke to Varsha Sundararajan, one of the organisers of the fest. Does India have a special connection with quilting? India has a 4000-year-old…

The question of whether non resident Indians (NRIs) can play an active role in determining the political leadership of their native country by casting their ballot, and how, has been at the centre of focus on many occasions. The coming elections to the Lok Sabha have created a new flutter over the issue with the looming possibility of NRIs being able to vote through appointed proxies. So, how does the system work at present? And what are the changes being mulled? Here is a quick look at the entire NRI voting process and possibility. According to the provisions of Section…

In an interview with Citizen Matters done in 2016, Rajendra Kumar Mishra, popularly known as R K Mishra, had said that the proposed elevated corridor project would encourage public transport. This was at the height of the public opposition to the proposed Steel flyover where the pros and cons of flyovers were being hotly debated. In the last part of our four part series on the Steel Flyover/ elevated corridor projects, we spoke to Misra, who as a member of the Chief Minister's Vision Group, had batted for the Elevated Corridor Project. Right at the outset, Mishra denied ever being…

https://twitter.com/Dr_RVS/status/1074696228447899650 This tweet from a resident asking the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) if they have planned to kill residents near the Karnataka Development Compost Corporation (KCDC), sums up the despair of the residents over the years who have been residing in the area. A group of 23 petitioners including the Kudlu, Hosapalya, HSR Layout, SomasundaraPalya, Parangipalya( KHHSP) Residents Welfare Association (RWA), have filed a writ petition in the Karnataka High Court in November 2018 demanding the closure of KCDC citing it to be a major source of pollution. The residents have run out of patience with the government. "Filing…